All that essential, but not actually useful, extra weight jacks up the cost of a mission. Falcon Heavy launches cost $1.2 million USD per ton of payload. Again, that’s a crazy improvement from earlier missions, but that many zeros on a space mission mean these launches will stay out-of-reach for consumers or smaller companies.

No one outside of SpaceX knows what Falcon Heavy costs (and that depends on whether you mean average cost or marginal cost).

And then there is the environmental cost. These souped-up rockets use more fuel, and Falcon rockets rely on what’s basically kerosene and oxygen. Per launch, the carbon these missions spew isn’t that much. But if space flight frequency reaches the twice a month threshold that SpaceX is aiming for, experts think the overall carbon output could reach 4,400 tons a year. If every private space company chimes in with their own launch emissions, that number could climb dramatically.

Not everyone uses kerosene. Blue Origin (and ULA) plan to use liquid natural gas (mostly methane), which has much lower carbon content. And they both plan LOX/LH2 upper stages, whose exhaust is water. And even at a hundred times that amount, it would continue to be dwarfed by the airline industry.

There are also all the potential atmospheric impacts that we don’t understand very well. Burning rocket fuel emits soot and a chemical called alumina, and scientists have started to study how these molecules break down our ozone layer, something we’ve been working hard to restore over several decades.

Again, not all rocket fuel. Methane will produce almost no soot, and hydrogen none. And only solid rockets emit alumina, and only ULA plans to use them (OK, well, NASA will have them on SLS, if it ever flies, but it will hardly ever fly).

No, it will be a long time, if ever, before we need space elevators, even if they’re technical feasible and practical.